The shock of the old
Anita Brookner
CAPTAIN VINEGAR'S COMMISSION by Philip Glazebrook Collins Harvill, £10.95 ■■••••••• Here is an adventure on the grand scale, or perhaps it is merely a caper. One's hesitation stems from a certain disjuncture between the great 19th-century journey to Damascus that it enfolds and the rather weak narrative pretext that sets it up. The author did in fact make such a journey to the ruined cities of Asia Minor, which he described in his book, Journey to Kars: this, and his obvious passion for 19th- century accounts of such travels and for the heroic characters who undertook then" have inspired him to write this 19th- century novel, complete with 19th-century dialogue, and filled with authentic 19th- century mysticism, a mysticism compound- ed of high ideals and social ambitions. Nineteenth-century mercantilism, too, rears it head, in the shape of a proposed Danube-Black Sea railway, but this is allowed to disappear into the desert sand. That the profits of such mercantilism should buy a title and a castle in Wales are taken as read. Other 19th-century phe- nomena are a tea merchant's villa in Clapham, a well set-up parson's estate in Kent, with a specially built ruined tower in the grounds, young ladies called Enid and Eliza and May, and a sword handed down to the hero by his father who had fought with King Bomba's Neapolitan army: all combine to convey the shock of the old. Anyone who has read Ann Schlee's The Proprietor will recognise the tone. Captain Vinegar's el5Trzmission, however, is very much a novel; or rather a narrative, for men.
It begins as a novel. Tresham Pitcher, the dubious hero, is first discovered in Scotland, on the hills surrounding his grandfather's manse. He witnesses an attack on a girl by the laird's boorish sons, and although he lays into them, and sustains a blow on the head, he does not feel that he has acquitted himself with full honours. His suspicion is reinforced by an unheroic young manhood spent in his stepfather's aforementioned Clapham vil- la. Sent away to school, he is temporarily a gentleman, with young Roland Farr as his fag, but his stepfather, who has invested unwisely in railway stock, is obliged to remove him, and his step-uncle, the cleric, is unwilling to provide funds for his con- tinuance. This step-uncle, who is a collec- tor of travel memoirs and grand folios of architectural antiquities such as Wood's Palmyra, obtains for Tresham a position as clerk at the Inland Waterways Board, and a lodging in Creech Lane, Bishopsgate. A journey of inspection through the canals of the south-west — clearly, any journey will divert this author — lands him in Roland Farr's castle in Wales, or rather the castle being renovated on a huge scale by Ro- land's father, Sir Daniel, a potentate in the railway business, whose journeys take him regularly to Vienna, Budapest, and points east, and whose adversary, a shady banker called Novis, attempts to frustrate his financial and aesthetic purposes. The latter purpose is represented by a statue of Dionysus by Phidias. Only the head is trussing. Novis has the head. It will be seen that this narrative is strung out on a very long line indeed. The year is 1848. Revolutions sweep Europe, and young Roland Farr, a cheerful character, is briefly democratic in outlook. He is quite safe, thinks Tresham; his status, after all, is assured. Tresham's own is extremely un- certain, and it is Tresham's uncertain status that gives the story whatever philosophical underpinning it has. Tresham is beguiled by Roland's twin, Enid, but knows he has little hope, for he is only a clerk in the Waterways Board, and Enid's mother, Lady Fanny, is a fearful snob. Sir Daniel, b. owever, is made of coarser stuff, and has interests that Tresham intends to pursue, namely the possibility of opening up the railway east of the Danube, and the recapture of the Phidias head. But in order to impress himself on Sir Daniel, Tresham has to become someone else. So he becom-
es Captain Vinegar, old soldier, man of action, heroic traveller, the man whom British governments trust and whom fore- igners obey. His commission, which will certainly confuse the reader, is to make a
land-march to India, and to write an
account of it for Buckle and Stourpaine, publishers, of 105 Piccadilly. His purpose, h. owever, is to further Sir Daniel's interests in Asia Minor, to recover the Phidias head, and to claim his reward in the shape of Enid Farr. Sir Daniel, completely taken in
by Captain Vinegar's whiskers and check suit, entrusts his son, Roland, to his care. R. oland, a decent fellow, with normal instincts and a lazy disposition, hates the idea but probably makes the better traveller. Or would do, had the author not devised a different fate for hill'.
We now witness the transformation of Tresham Pitcher into Captain Vinegar, as fearless and as loathsome a character as might be met on any journey, particularly one as hazardous as this. Where Tresham Is weak and characterless, Vinegar is brave as a lion, mysterious and aristocratic. He is also a bully and a liar, as is evinced by the account he sets down for those publishers in Piccadilly. He is, however, a true traveller, impatient of cities and civilisa- tion, aching for the desert and the com- pany of fierce and inarticulate tribesmen. The journey — and this is what lifts the story from muddle into singularity — takes Roland and Tresham, or Vinegar, from Vienna to Budapest, thence to Bucharest, Constantinople, Iznik, Broussa, Afyon, Konia, Antioch, Alepp, and Damascus, where poor Roland meets his fate. Vine- gar, meanwhile, is brought a mysterious message by an old man who tells him that the head of Dionysus will be delivered to him in Palmyra. Another publishing jour- ney is called for, which the almost dehuma- nised Vinegar undertakes with rapture. By this time he has almost gone native, and the reader is asked to share his euphoria. I was trying to puzzle out how the old man with the Phidias had managed to identify Vinegar in the midst of a crowd in a Turkish cafe. Who wrote the messages for him? And how had he got the head away from Novis? And if Novis was in Vienna, who killed the old man in Palmyra? Who put his head into the basket instead of the statue's? Above all, why at this point did Vinegar go home, when he could have courted further glory b,y going on to India, since this was indeed his commission?
There is a further question. Why does the book end so abruptly when clearly the author could go on for a further 300 pages? When the journey ends, so does the narrative, apart from some perfunctory rumblings from Sir Daniel Farr, who at last begins to have his suspicions about Vine- gar's authenticity. There is a mysticism here concerned with journeys that cannot quite be bothered enough with story- telling. But the journey itself is an inspired piece of writing and will find its way into the hearts and minds of Captain Vinegars everywhere. One more cavil: this sun- drenched story has a bleak sub-text that is in fact more interesting than the relentless- ly paced narrative will allow. I wish that this bleakness could have found its way into Tresham's inner life. It is there in embryo and I was longing for it to catch up with him.
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